Now that they have their majority, Stephen Harper’s Tories have pledged to right one wrong the opposition parties prevented them from correcting while they were only a minority government: Friday they announced they will add 30 more House of Commons seats in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. These three economically powerful provinces are among the most underrepresented regions in the Western world. And this state of affairs is compromising an important pillar of our democracy, namely representation by population.

Last year, the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto examined the national parliaments and congresses in several major Western democracies. Of the 113 provinces or states examined, the aforementioned three Canadian provinces were all among the five least-well represented, when their share of seats in the national legislature was compared to their share of the national population.

If the average weight of a voter in such an international survey is taken to be 1.0, the weight of a vote in Quebec is 1.01, almost exactly what it should be. In Alberta, though, the average is just 0.92, in Ontario 0.91 and in B.C. just 0.90. Meanwhile, in Manitoba, each vote is worth 1.22. New Brunswick votes are worth 1.34, Saskatchewan 1.39 and P.E.I. votes 2.88. Far from there being one-person, one-vote in Canada, a vote in PEI is worth more than three times what a vote in B.C. is worth.

Put another way, the average riding in B.C. contains about three times as many voters as does the average riding in P.E.I. – which means B.C. votes are diluted by a factor of three vis-à-vis P.E.I.

The disparities are so large that the Mowat Centre warned “the situation as it now stands is seriously undermining the principle that all citizens should have an equal say in choosing their government.”

Before Parliament was dissolved for the May 2 election, there was a bill on the order paper that would have gone a long way to correcting this inequity. Under Bill C-12, 30 additional seats would have been added to the Commons, 18 in Ontario, seven in B.C. and five in Alberta. That still would not have been quite enough, but it would have gone a long way to restoring the principle of one-Canadian, one vote. Sadly, just before Christmas, the opposition parties signalled that they would no longer support this vital reform because Quebec objected to the way the bill would dilute that province’s disproportionate influence over federal affairs and the Tories permitted it to languish.

Now, thankfully, the Tories have announced they will act quickly to reintroduce and pass a bill to add the 30 additional seats.

The Tories can ignore any objections from Quebec on this issue. Not only are there no moral grounds for Quebecers to deny Ontarians, Albertans and British Columbians their rightful level of representation in Parliament – a level equal to Quebecers – there is no longer any reason for the Tories to fear Quebec retaliation. The Tories have the smallest Quebec caucus of any majority since 1917 (when the conscription crisis during the First World War caused Quebec to vote almost entirely Liberal and the rest of the country almost entirely Conservative).

Before Christmas, the Tories failed to fight the opposition’s abandonment of C-12 for fear that standing up to Quebec’s objections would cost them new seats in that province. Now that it is clear Quebecers are never likely to vote for the Harper-led Tories in large numbers, the government need not concern itself over how Quebec will receive new seats in Anglo provinces.

While they are at it, the Tories also should pass legislation that makes adjustment to Commons representation automatic after each decadal census. For too long, federal governments have postponed making such adjustments for as long as they could to avoid annoying Quebec and the other slow-growing provinces. Sometimes, adjustments made based on one census have not taken effect until well after the next census was complete. In this way, Canada has ended up with one of the most distorted national legislatures in the free world.

The Tories should be commended for acting so quickly to redress Canada’s democratic imbalance.